Triaging of information in a clinical setting, such as a physician office, is typically a manual process. Information to be reviewed by a physician may be placed in specific locations throughout a physician office or otherwise delivered to the physician depending upon the criticality of the information. For example, less time-sensitive and less critical information may be placed at a physician's desk, such that the physician may review the information at a convenient time. More time-sensitive information may be located at a strategic location, such as next to an exam room or a nurses' station, so that a physician may timely review the information and address any needs in between seeing patients. Highly critical and time-sensitive results, such as critical results from laboratory or diagnostic tests indicating a potentially life-threatening condition for a patient, may result in the physician being interrupted by a nurse or a page received via a pager.
The end-to-end process of notifying a physician of critical and time-sensitive information may often be slow and inefficient. For example, in the context of notifying a physician of a critical laboratory result, the process may begin when a laboratory technician obtains a result and interprets it as a critical result. The technician may determine where the patient is located, and call a ward clerk or receptionist at the patient location. The nurse responsible for the patient may then be located and provided the critical information. After receiving the critical information, the nurse may pull the patient's chart and chart the information. The nurse may then need to review policies and procedures to determine how to deliver the information to the appropriate physician (e.g., call a pager or answering service). In cases in which the physician is seeing a patient and receives a page, the physician may interrupt the exam to return the page. After receiving the critical information, the physician will typically need to decide how to address the situation. Often, the physician requires additional information, such as previous testing values, to make such a determination. However, the nurse or laboratory providing the critical information to the physician may not have such additional information readily available. In such cases, the physician must obtain the necessary information and then make a determination regarding how to address the critical information.
Accordingly, current approaches to triaging information present a number of drawbacks. As indicated, the process may often be time-consuming for cases in which time is of the essence. In addition, a manual approach to delivering such information may be error-prone as it provides opportunities for the miscommunication of information. Further, when a physician receives the information, additional background information may not be readily available to allow the physician to make an immediate decision. Moreover, the physician has little control over the triaging of information as the initial interpretation of information and determination of the criticality of the information is left to others. As such, physicians may be needlessly interrupted for notifications of information deemed to be critical or highly time-sensitive by others, but which is in fact less time-sensitive information.